Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Hello there. Okay, let's get the stream going. One, two, three. There we go. Do that. And then... And that. Okay. Hello, Yvonne. Can you hear me okay? Yes, I agree completely with all sentiments. Ready to just go?
|
Ivan:
[0:28]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, let's get this show on the road because it can't be. We got to do this toot-sweet.
|
Sam:
[0:34]
| You have a hard stop? Tell me when it is, Sol.
|
Ivan:
[0:36]
| I mean, I don't have a hard stop, but I got a lot of shit to prepare because I got to fly out of town again tomorrow.
|
Sam:
[0:44]
| Okay, understood. Here we go. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, November 1st, 2025. It's just after 16 UTC as we're starting to record. I'm Sam and Jervon Bowes here. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:19]
| Ah, hello. This is the first podcast of Sam being a free man.
|
Sam:
[1:25]
| So I guess for those who don't know, I guess I'll start out my butt first. So here's our schedule. The butt first is the non-newsy stuff. And then we'll talk about news stuff. Yvonne and I usually...
|
Ivan:
[1:35]
| This is kind of newsy.
|
Sam:
[1:35]
| Well, okay, news, but it's like not like world news.
|
Ivan:
[1:40]
| Well, no, well, no, no.
|
Sam:
[1:43]
| You were a tiny part. I was a part of a news event.
|
Ivan:
[1:47]
| Yes, you were, this time, you were actually part of a news event.
|
Sam:
[1:52]
| That's right. I was in China with Donald Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:56]
| Oh, yes, of course.
|
Sam:
[1:58]
| I helped out with that whole story. I made peace with Cambodia and Thailand or something.
|
Ivan:
[2:04]
| You made the soybean deal.
|
Sam:
[2:06]
| Yes, that was me. That China is now buying 11 soybeans from the United States, as The Onion reported.
|
Ivan:
[2:13]
| 11?
|
Sam:
[2:13]
| 11.
|
Ivan:
[2:14]
| So that's the number that you negotiated. 11.
|
Sam:
[2:17]
| That's the number. Just 11. 11 soybeans.
|
Ivan:
[2:18]
| I thought they were—so, okay, well, that tracks, because Trump reported that it was like millions. But, as usual with him, so it's an exaggerated number. The number you negotiated was 11.
|
Sam:
[2:30]
| 11. Now, that was according to The Onion, of course, and you know what kind of a news source they are.
|
Ivan:
[2:38]
| Well, I mean, lately, honestly, the reality is you can't tell the difference between The Onion and Real News. So I, you know, I mean, when The Onion really has to work so hard, so hard to be fake, I mean, they really, really struggle at this moment in time in history.
|
Sam:
[3:01]
| So anyway, no, my real news, and I will continue for... 85 more days or so to not explicitly say the name here because that's how long until ties are officially broken. But a major tech company had a large round of layoffs this week and I was one of them.
|
Ivan:
[3:25]
| Yeah, the worst thing is that I get the news. I see that because the news came out the day before and you know i see the news and the first thing is like oh shit man no come on i'm gonna be this time and then the next morning.
|
Sam:
[3:44]
| Well, and look, I, you know, Yvonne shared the article on the curmudgeon's core Slack that my company was about to have another really large round of layoffs. So far, only half of what is rumored has happened. So I keep assuming there's going to be a second drop soon.
|
Ivan:
[4:00]
| Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, sure.
|
Sam:
[4:02]
| But yeah, my immediate response was, essentially, I would be absolutely shocked if I was not included. I haven't talked a lot about what's been going on at work for obvious reasons here on the podcast, but basically for the last few years, it's been clear I was not a great fit for where I was. Well, let's be honest. There have been ups and downs. There have been ups and downs.
|
Ivan:
[4:29]
| I don't even think, listen, a great fit for where you've been. I think.
|
Sam:
[4:33]
| No, I'm talking very narrow organizationally the projects I have actually been assigned to. so recapping the last couple years i was on a project for a while that to me was from nearly the beginning clear that it was doomed okay it was an experiment it was something they were trying to do but it was clear to me it wasn't working and at first again.
|
Ivan:
[4:57]
| This is not that has nothing to do with fit with you that's just.
|
Sam:
[5:01]
| No no wait wait let me let me finish so at first and so at At first, I had something very narrowly tailored that was in the realm of things I knew, things I had expertise in, things I was doing, and I made that happen. But then after that was done...
|
Sam:
[5:21]
| There was clearly a, what do we do with Sam now kind of thing going on? Like to try to fit me into other things that were happening in the project that were less good fits. And that increased over time. And over the last three months specifically, I was actually, it was so clear that I made no sense in the team that I was actually organizationally part of that another team where the manager was someone I knew pretty well was borrowing me to do some stuff and that was for the first time in a while I was actually having some fun but that manager had no official head count to keep me permanently etc so like and and even there let me finish a few more seconds And then you can tell me all the stuff. But like, and even there, like the stuff I was doing was clearly sort of like, okay, if no one was doing this, they could get by. And so when the, you know, when it came up, it was like, okay, clearly like, you know, if they were going to make a list, you know, I'm in the, okay, it's nice to have him doing the stuff he's doing, but we don't need it. We can do without. And so I was like, okay, I'll be on the list.
|
Ivan:
[6:39]
| All right. This is my my whole thing is that my entire disagreement with you were, well, it's just that I wasn't a good fit for what. No, no. Listen, they were doing this on purpose. OK, this is not they they could have given you other stuff to do that. This is, you know, the company is so large that I am sure that there are many other fucking places where they could have used your skills and knowledge.
|
Sam:
[7:12]
| If you look at it from a high enough up level, sure. My sort of like immediate managers had nothing to do with, but could they have worked to find something else? Yes. But I mean, their approach to that is you go look. And I poked around looking and didn't find anything.
|
Ivan:
[7:31]
| But I was still trying to do the day job. Listen, I'm sorry, but let's be clear about this. The company had been trying.
|
Sam:
[7:38]
| The company was very much trying to shed people in various ways.
|
Ivan:
[7:42]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[7:43]
| They were trying.
|
Ivan:
[7:44]
| This is the whole return to office thing. The reason why they weren't finding. The reason why they weren't trying to position you somewhere else is because they wanted to get rid of people. They were actively doing shit so people would quit. I mean, literally, I mean, for an extended period of time right now, it was first, you know, look, they had laid off some people. I read about somebody.
|
Sam:
[8:12]
| OK, let me just say one thing. I believe that is true on the higher levels. If you look really short term at my immediate management, I would say less so like my skip level, not my immediate. Somebody is somebody I've worked with for many, many years, have a good relationship with them, et cetera. And I don't think they were they were explicitly, hey, let's figure out how to get rid of Sam. But the overall incentives of the whole company right now are slim down, get rid of people.
|
Ivan:
[8:44]
| Let me put it to you this way, another way, because I've dealt with this before. Look, the guys who were in your direct management, okay, I'm sure that they, as I have happened to be before, they were wise to the fact that they were going to demand that they fire some people, okay? I mean, they were actively, so I still remember a few years ago where I was in that situation on a couple of occasions where, look, I had some people that were really bad performers, okay? Now, I didn't, I held on to them for a little bit.
|
Sam:
[9:21]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[9:21]
| Now, why? Because what they asked for people that I already had, who the hell I'm going to call it.
|
Sam:
[9:27]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[9:28]
| Exactly. Okay? So, you know, whomever was at your direct management level had made the decision, now you know what listen they're gonna ask me so some people i'm not gonna fuck this shit you know i've got this guy marked to you know what when they ask me oh here you go here he is head on a platter here you go done i.
|
Sam:
[9:47]
| Hear you i hear you.
|
Ivan:
[9:48]
| But uh so but my my my my whole thing is look you had spent almost 20 years almost it will.
|
Sam:
[9:59]
| It officially my end date is not till the end of january so i will make 20 years my 20 year anniversary is january 11th.
|
Ivan:
[10:07]
| And the when i have been going through these things usually it's because our profits are falling we're getting squeezed we've got costs you know shit you know sales are not going.
|
Sam:
[10:19]
| Well you save more money getting rid of old timers.
|
Ivan:
[10:21]
| You know but and but but even then you know what we never really targeted like, We never really, like, I didn't, you know, we didn't look through the salaries and, like, say, oh, this guy's too expensive. But I do think that given the recent trends in Silicon Valley, and I'd shared this thing where they were talking about how some people at high-level executives who keep saying, well, Silicon Valley's too young, so they're spending $150,000 on, like, cosmetic surgery to make themselves look 20 years younger. and how they, for some reason, shun, you know, older people. They, they, they, listen, a lot of these people have the mentality right now that I, hey, why do I want this older, more expensive guy when I can get four younger, cheaper guys? And that's, that's, that's a thought. I, the other day was reading a couple of articles related around this. And the one thing that I realized is the stupidity of this whole fucking thing.
|
Sam:
[11:25]
| Yvonne, you were reading it as you were dyeing your hair and beard and putting on like face cream.
|
Ivan:
[11:31]
| Of course, yes. As you can see, my beard is so dyed at this moment.
|
Sam:
[11:35]
| It's white for people who can't see it. So is mine.
|
Ivan:
[11:38]
| It's perfectly white. So I was reading about this. The one thing that I keep stumbling into this just stupidity about this is that... One of the things that I know that myself personally bring to the table as having done 20 years of 30 years of a whole bunch of this shit and not being that slow yet, thank God, is that, you know what, I've already done a whole bunch of this shit and I already know how to do it right and not wrong. And so I see so many young people that come into our organization that just have no idea and just keep doing it wrong. And I'm just like, OK, fine. You know, listen, you want to pay for somebody to spin their wheels for five days to figure out the wrong way while I usually in a few hours figure do it the right way. OK, go ahead. Just because the guy is cheap. But you know what? You're just replacing volume for knowledge, for experience. OK. And I hate to break it to people like right now when they talk about older and younger people right now.
|
Sam:
[12:52]
| Are you about to start slagging on the young people?
|
Ivan:
[12:55]
| No, no, no, no, no. I'm going to talk about a difference that there is right now between then and now. When I was, when I came into corporate America, a lot of the executives that were older than us were not raised with computing. so when i would go in and do a task say and i had to use these new computer tools or whatever right now boom boom boom i could get to do it they had no idea how to do it the executives had no clue they looked at us like we were space aliens they were like how the hell did you do any of this i vaguely.
|
Sam:
[13:25]
| Remember those days.
|
Ivan:
[13:26]
| Yes and i and we were like space aliens okay how the fuck could you know all this shit here's the reality i'm still like at at at my older than even a lot of those executives and I'm explaining to fucking younger people coming in right now how the fuck to do a PDF how the fuck to do this how do you send this document I'm like Jesus Christ don't you guys know how to do anything, OK, because and there they come from a different spectrum on computing where it's like all they do to everything on a fucking phone. It's all I don't know how to fucking use a computer in a lot of cases. I mean, they because, well, they just spent their whole time on the phone. Oh, so you don't actually know how to use your fucking computer. You don't actually know how to go in an application and actually pull a CRM report or like do this thing, a transaction online. Well, I literally spent the last couple of months explaining to people how to do some kind of transaction where you have to fill out a portal and submit information.
|
Sam:
[14:20]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[14:22]
| Because they don't know how to do it. They don't know how to do it. They're like sitting there and they are baffled by a transaction portal.
|
Sam:
[14:31]
| I have definitely heard this report from more people than you in terms of younger folks being, you know, whizzes with the phone. right but you know if you put them in front of a you know an actual old fashion old fashion an actual full-fledged computer there are lots of tasks they just don't know how to do because they've never actually been confronted with them they've never had to they never had to and in some cases you can say well you know fast forward another 10 years they won't need to like these are obsolete dying skills but maybe maybe not maybe but but at the same time it does It is a gap for some people right now.
|
Ivan:
[15:15]
| For a large group of people, Sam, it's not that small. I thought at first it was a smaller group. Sam, I had to, all my nephews who went to university, highly educated people, 20s and 30s, none of them could navigate a fucking government portal. Not one of them. To upload a whole bunch of documents, to submit a fucking application for citizenship. And yes, if any of you are listening, you guys, for the love of God, Jesus Christ, none of you could do what I'll be telling you, for real.
|
Sam:
[15:50]
| Just imagine if you had to do it all on paper.
|
Ivan:
[15:55]
| Holy shit. They would have, they would have died. They would have just, yeah.
|
Sam:
[15:59]
| Okay. Back to me.
|
Ivan:
[16:02]
| But my point is that, yeah, listen, there is, there is, I do see a dichotomy in the economy. I do see companies that do value your skills, but it is definitely evident that your CEO really, really, really hates tenure. weird employees i mean they're they're he has it in for people that have been there a long time they're expensive well i think old i think more culture yeah.
|
Sam:
[16:32]
| The culture yeah yeah.
|
Ivan:
[16:33]
| Culture well oh it's not about profits no yeah we we were actually yeah we were making tons of money we didn't it's just we needed to fix the culture well.
|
Sam:
[16:43]
| You know look there there if anything i think actual culture stuff since our current CEO took over for the last one has declined significantly.
|
Ivan:
[16:55]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[16:55]
| Now, he blames it all on COVID, right? and work from home.
|
Ivan:
[17:01]
| No, it's him.
|
Sam:
[17:02]
| It's him. It's him.
|
Ivan:
[17:04]
| It's him.
|
Sam:
[17:04]
| And there are just all kinds of things in terms of what's the priority, what things are emphasized, what things are less emphasized. Since that switchover, there has been a change of tone that is quite noticeable in all sorts of things from top to bottom, I think. Now, is is this common when you go from a founder to the first person after the founder? It kind of is. It's happened in a bunch of companies, you know, but change.
|
Ivan:
[17:35]
| Well, I mean, look, people at well, we can talk about that company by name, Microsoft, for example. OK, you know, have said that also about the current CEO going from Balmer to Satya, that a number of that actually for all the Balmer was a psychopath to a certain extent about certain things. But he really was like, in terms of like treatment of employees was better, way better. And that and that also I think there is this thing. And I and I know that the one guy who the last couple of years definitely everybody took as an example was Elon, who basically started treating employees like dirt. And, you know, it's like because he, even though you can, look, you can take a look at the empirical metrics and you can see that his companies haven't actually done that well during that time period, the ones that he's running where he's treating employees like shit. Everybody took that as an example because he's rich and famous. That's it. And so a lot of people just jumped on that bandwagon of, hey, let's treat employees like shit.
|
Sam:
[18:46]
| Yeah, and, you know, look, There was a lot of trying to rein back in control after work from home.
|
Ivan:
[19:00]
| But it's just a power play. It wasn't about profits. It wasn't about performance. It wasn't about any. This is the thing. This is all about power.
|
Sam:
[19:09]
| Yeah. And getting things back to what people were used to, I think.
|
Ivan:
[19:14]
| Make America great again?
|
Sam:
[19:17]
| I guess so. I mean, the one thing all that work from home proved to a lot of employees like me is how much better quality of life could be. And you could still get most of the shit done. Now, if you do trade off, are there some things that are better in person? I'm sure there are some things that are better in person. I know there are some things that are better in person. But you can carefully trade them off. You can learn how to work in that remote environment. You can do all kinds of things to make that work because there's balance in this benefit. However, for a lot of companies, the effect they noticed is, hey, wait, the balance of power is shifting towards the employees. We can't have that. We need.
|
Ivan:
[20:06]
| It's like I used to say that some people, you know, are bosses and some people like to be bossy. And that's the thing. You can't be bossy if you don't have people there. And if you're a person that has trust issues, not being able to see the people, you know, like having them there. I want that person right there, right there. See them. I want to see them at that desk.
|
Sam:
[20:31]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[20:32]
| I want to see them sitting at that chair.
|
Sam:
[20:34]
| Well, I will say I had at one point in our list of potential things to talk about that we never got to. This project I was working on like the last two to three months, for the first time in years, the other people I was dealing with on the project.
|
Sam:
[20:52]
| Actually in the same city and, in fact, the same building as I was. I actually moved into the office of one person that I was working with. And for the first time since being mandated to go back to the office, there actually was some benefit for, oh, look, the guy is sitting right there, five feet away. The other people I'm working with are down the hall and I do bump into them in the hall. And And yes, there were circumstances where people were talking about something and I walked past in the hall and I'm like, oh, I should be part of this conversation. And I just stopped. So, you know, look, there are benefits in certain circumstances. And, you know, for the first few years of mandated return to office, everybody I was working with was somewhere else, including the people I was reporting to. So it's not like I saw them anyway. But these last couple of months, I was like, OK, fine. This has some value because the people I'm working with are actually right here, at least a significant amount of time.
|
Sam:
[21:57]
| And, but there's still the issue of trade-offs, right? Like what, was there some value in those conversations? Yes. Was it worth me spending two hours a day in the car? I don't think so. Because frankly, that made me less productive during the time I was theoretically working. It honestly probably reduced the number of hours I would actually work, you know, because outside of work, obligations stayed the same, you know. And so anyway, let me hit real quick, like, how I felt about all this and what I'm doing next.
|
Ivan:
[22:38]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[22:39]
| For folks.
|
Ivan:
[22:39]
| Yes. More important. Yes.
|
Sam:
[22:41]
| Yeah. So first of all, as should be clear from the conversation so far, I was not surprised. Like I, I, if anything, I was surprised I lasted this long. given how I felt about things also just, you know, and, and I'm sure this reflection, I've been burnt out on this stuff for so long.
|
Ivan:
[23:05]
| You know, a few times, Sam had been like, so burnt out. He threatened to quit. And what I said.
|
Sam:
[23:10]
| I never actually threatened you.
|
Ivan:
[23:12]
| You said that you listen.
|
Sam:
[23:14]
| You said I wanted to.
|
Ivan:
[23:15]
| You said you wanted to quit my statement.
|
Sam:
[23:18]
| I've wanted to quit for a decade.
|
Ivan:
[23:20]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[23:20]
| Was I ever actually going to do it? No.
|
Ivan:
[23:23]
| Listen, yeah. Well, you weren't tempted a couple of times. What I said is, listen, you asshole, you will not leave that fucking company unless they give you a package. Those were my words. I'm like, you're not going out.
|
Sam:
[23:36]
| Or I had an offer from somewhere else.
|
Ivan:
[23:38]
| Or you had an offer from somewhere else. Yes.
|
Sam:
[23:41]
| I was never going to leave without one of those things in reality. As much as I fantasized about doing it, one of those things was going to happen. So, but, you know, I, you know, I've been burnt out for a long time. I've been unhappy for a long time. So honestly, and like even my limited efforts to find something else, you know, it's hard to spend a lot of time and effort doing that when you're also trying to make the current thing work and you're spending time on that. So, you know, but immediately, like, look, it's a it's a mix of emotions. On the one hand, of course, there's some anxiety. There's a lot of unknown. But at the same time, it feels like a huge weight off my shoulders. You know, I'm like, thank God that is over. Like, I I've been unhappy for a long time. I can decompress a little bit. And again, the last couple of months were a little bit better. But on average, I've been unhappy for a long time. And, you know, look, there was a decent severance. It gives me some runaway.
|
Ivan:
[24:57]
| I'll say more than decent. It was considering how the market is. It was pretty good.
|
Sam:
[25:01]
| They did do a good job. I mean, basically, I have my current salary for eight months.
|
Ivan:
[25:07]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[25:07]
| Roughly.
|
Ivan:
[25:07]
| Yeah. They did do, you know.
|
Sam:
[25:09]
| Considering how. Some of it in lump sum. some of it and you know i i continue i'm officially an employee till the end of january and then i get a lump sum severance after that and essentially i've got i've got eight months of runway before i even have to start thinking about things that you know pull into savings or retirement or asking family for help or anything like that i did immediately get offers tell you already yes that.
|
Ivan:
[25:37]
| The house in Melbourne is not there.
|
Sam:
[25:41]
| Anymore.
|
Ivan:
[25:41]
| Okay, all right.
|
Sam:
[25:43]
| The house that my wife and I lived in for like a year?
|
Ivan:
[25:47]
| Yeah, a little bit more. Yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[25:49]
| Something like that, that we rented from Yvonne's family when we were in Florida for a little while before we got our own place, which then we had to turn around immediately.
|
Ivan:
[25:59]
| Which is like, we were like, I mean, at first it was free. Then we were like, I don't know, a few hundred bucks. We were not charging you much. We actually didn't want to charge you anything.
|
Sam:
[26:09]
| There was a nominal fee.
|
Ivan:
[26:10]
| Yeah, we didn't actually want to charge you anything. You guys kind of like insistent.
|
Sam:
[26:15]
| We we paid you something but uh yeah yeah i i forget what it was but it it you're you're right you gave us a deal it was good thank you very much but don't have a house anymore if.
|
Ivan:
[26:28]
| It was there but.
|
Sam:
[26:30]
| Yeah i and you know like immediately after i sent out stuff to family like a couple family members were immediately like hey we we've got some stuff saved we can help if you need it You know, just let us know. And I was like, I very much appreciate that. I hope it won't be necessary. We've got some runway. But believe me, if push comes to shove and it is necessary, you know, I'll take anything that anyone wants to offer. But but we're not there yet. We got we got some runway. We got some time. And, you know, immediately, like I'm I'm taking a little bit of time to decompress before even really thinking of much. I mean, Brandy had knee surgery this week, you know, so she had knee surgery on the same day the announcements came out, by the way. Listen, I just just just to be clear on timeline. I'll notice this note. Note this, too. They sent out text messages at 3 a.m. saying to check your email.
|
Ivan:
[27:32]
| Oh, that's lovely. At 3 a.m., you motherfuckers.
|
Sam:
[27:36]
| At 3 a.m. They sent the text messages out at 3 a.m. saying, check your mail before you go to work. okay and so then and i i woke up in the middle of the night as old folks like us often do to use the facilities i saw the message at about 4 a.m you're.
|
Ivan:
[27:54]
| Like ah shit.
|
Sam:
[27:56]
| Well not shit you're.
|
Ivan:
[27:57]
| Like ah well there it is.
|
Sam:
[27:59]
| I was like oh there it is there's the expected message yeah you know yeah i went and checked all the messages i i i read the the documentation they sent us and all that kind of crap and i and then i waited because i i was like i was really tempted to immediately send something to the curmudgeon's corner slack and stuff but i'm like no brandy needs to know first before i go tell anybody yes that.
|
Ivan:
[28:25]
| That that's uh.
|
Sam:
[28:26]
| That's uh that's yeah yeah yeah you know so i waited i waited for her to wake up, Then I talked to her. I did not go back to sleep after that.
|
Ivan:
[28:37]
| I can say. Understandable. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[28:41]
| You know, I spent some time working on other stuff on my computer. I did some other stuff. You know, I wrote a letter to send to my family. But I waited for Brandy to wake up. Brandy was first. Second, I sent something to the curmudgeon's course. First Brandy. second other family members immediate family members my dad my mom my sister and then third was the curmudgeon's corner slack and you know and then as soon as all that was done it was time to get brandy ready to go to the hospital to get like a big chunk cut out of her knee you know um well that reminds a.
|
Ivan:
[29:21]
| Little side comment it reminds me.
|
Sam:
[29:23]
| That when i got when.
|
Ivan:
[29:24]
| I got fired.
|
Sam:
[29:25]
| From kodak the guy was trying to schedule.
|
Ivan:
[29:27]
| A call for a day that was having my colonoscopy and i'm like you You know, I actually, but he just asked for a conference call. This wasn't like an obvious thing, which is normal for him to ask for a conference call. So it wasn't like, hey, I need to have a call to you to discuss something. Can you do it today? And I'm like, well, no, not today, but can we do it tomorrow? Sure. And then the next day, that was the thing. So I don't know what the hell is the thing with the medical procedures and the thing.
|
Sam:
[29:51]
| Anyway, we had the surgery. Then we, you know, so that took that day. The, the next, and then I've been doing stuff like Halloween prep stuff for my son and some stuff like that. Cause he always does, you know, between my wife and my son, Halloween is a very elaborate thing at our house. And anyway, so like, I, I haven't, I, I'm going to take some time to, to decompress. I'm not like going into immediate, like I must be spending, you know, six hours a day job hunting yet.
|
Ivan:
[30:25]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[30:26]
| I will get to that point. and I won't wait that long.
|
Ivan:
[30:30]
| Yeah, but you can take a couple of weeks to chill out.
|
Sam:
[30:33]
| I can take some time.
|
Ivan:
[30:34]
| You need it.
|
Sam:
[30:36]
| You know, I'm going to sleep in.
|
Ivan:
[30:38]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[30:38]
| I'm going to like, you know, relax a bit. I'm going to do some stuff around the house. I mentioned in my note to the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack, I want to spend some time like on some of my personal projects that haven't been getting the amount of time I wish they could get. Like things that I've been maybe squeezing in an hour a week. Let's do a little bit more than that for a little bit. And then, yes, I'll start earnestly trying to figure out what the hell I'm doing next. And certainly there's a lot of just traditional job hunting for.
|
Sam:
[31:13]
| First of all, all the networking stuff. Yes, if you've known me in the past, you'll be getting emails from me. I'll post something new on LinkedIn within the next few days. days i'll post something on facebook within the next few days saying hey i was one of the people blah blah blah if you know anything talk to me blah blah blah and and then i'll be doing individual reach outs to people who seem to make sense and all that kind of stuff yes i'll be doing all that kind of stuff yes i'll be looking at job listings and like just i'll be much more aggressive than i have before probably and just applying to all kinds of shit instead of just stuff that looks like, hey, this would really be a great fit. I would love this. But also, I want to take some time to, explore things that are further afield too not that i think they're necessarily the way i want to go but i would feel bad about myself if i didn't at least like look into things that weren't like immediately obvious like continue the same shit i've been.
|
Ivan:
[32:09]
| Doing what i mean you know look if you could get if you get paid similar to what you're getting paid right now what you were getting paid okay and and you got the job like when when sam worked at this place called wabco okay many years ago you know one of the one of the i will say that one of the cool things about him working there was he always wound up making all sorts of experiments with big rubber things so we have these like massive like about one of the things that he that he gave me and i i wonder where the hell it is because i know i had it before he made this huge rubber ball that was made out of a super bouncy material but it was like the size of an orange okay it was just huge and this thing had these ridiculous i mean the bounce ability of this thing was crazy also at the same time it was very it was big and heavy it was big and heavy i mean if you threw this thing inside a room you would destroy the room okay it would cause some damage for sure okay and i remember that i would go outside to show my nephews this damn ball and on pavement you threw that thing into the pavement and it would bounce into the sky like crazy. But at the same time, when it hit the pavement, I mean, the pavement shook from how hard that damn thing hit. So if you could find a job that would provide that kind of environment again.
|
Ivan:
[33:37]
| But, you know, with similar pay, I would really be all for that.
|
Sam:
[33:41]
| Yeah. You know, like, look, honestly, like in my head, my ideal world would be to figure out something to make money that does not actually involve once again, working for a big corporate thing. But I know, I know all the pitfalls of that. Okay. I know all the reasons that often doesn't work. I don't actually just want to drive an Uber or something, you know?
|
Ivan:
[34:08]
| Okay i'm sorry but for giving your driving uh skills i would say that the last thing that you should should be on your list is driving an uber.
|
Sam:
[34:20]
| Well i i could drive the ones where you're just delivering people's dinners or something.
|
Ivan:
[34:25]
| Without actually having passengers i i want to see how how many dinners get spilled crushed you know like wait are.
|
Sam:
[34:33]
| You not supposed to do that.
|
Ivan:
[34:34]
| Yeah that yeah that that's part of it yeah not like that yeah dinners that get left on the on the roof of the car you drive off that you know that kind of stuff yeah yeah look you know.
|
Sam:
[34:47]
| And i don't know and at the same time i.
|
Ivan:
[34:49]
| Know a paper route a paper route there you go no you know i.
|
Sam:
[34:55]
| I also kind of feel like i know i don't have like the right mindset for a freelancer kind of thing. I just, I don't feel like I could make that work. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong, but I want to at least think about, I want to brainstorm off the wall options and knowing 99% of them would never ever work, but just at least brainstorm a little bit about them. See if, you know, anything can happen, you know, like, I don't know. I could do a food truck.
|
Ivan:
[35:27]
| A food truck?
|
Sam:
[35:28]
| A food truck. I told Brandy.
|
Ivan:
[35:31]
| I told Brandy. Wait, wait, wait. Here's the menu at the food truck is going to be popcorn. The crescent rolls.
|
Sam:
[35:38]
| People like popcorn?
|
Ivan:
[35:39]
| Crescent rolls. Okay.
|
Sam:
[35:40]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[35:41]
| There you go. What else do we have? Crescent rolls, popcorn. I'm forgetting some other staple. Coke.
|
Sam:
[35:47]
| Yeah, there you go.
|
Ivan:
[35:49]
| Yeah, and Coke.
|
Sam:
[35:49]
| No, I...
|
Ivan:
[35:50]
| That would be the menu. Hey, crescent rolls, popcorn, Coke.
|
Sam:
[35:55]
| I told Brandy, like, okay, I can't do the cooking, but I could run the register. I could run the register in the food truck.
|
Ivan:
[36:02]
| Oh, there you go. Okay, well, okay. There you go. All right. That's something. That's...
|
Sam:
[36:06]
| Somebody else will have to do the cooking part, but you know...
|
Ivan:
[36:09]
| You know, I ran it. Let me tell you something. I ran a register for years. I will say that for a while, it was fun, but after a while, it gets a little bit boring.
|
Sam:
[36:17]
| Well, the key to make it like work better is to make sure you don't have that many customers because then you can just do other stuff.
|
Ivan:
[36:25]
| Well, that's true. That is the one thing that happened. Yes. But even that, I guess that back when I did it.
|
Sam:
[36:30]
| Of course, I guess that doesn't work as well for the making money.
|
Ivan:
[36:33]
| No, it doesn't. Okay. No, it does not. I will say that when I was, you know, when I was little and I did that at the store on Sundays, usually the crowds were pretty thin at the store. Okay. That I would do a shift at the cash register on Sundays from 1 p.m. till 9 p.m. OK. All right. On a Sunday. Tells you the kind of kind of fun that we had owning our own business a whole bunch of times. I did that during the summer mostly. And, you know, the one thing that I will say is that I think given that we have more electronic devices now, it'd probably be more entertaining. Back then, basically, it just meant that I was just reading a lot. You know, just a lot of magazines. We had a big magazine rack.
|
Sam:
[37:18]
| Reading's not a bad thing.
|
Ivan:
[37:20]
| I don't know. We had a big magazine rack and stuff. So, you know, and then the other thing that would happen is I'd eat the inventory, which that wasn't like that really good because we had a lot of, you know, I mean, here's the thing. Every couple of hours, I would make fresh popcorn because we had a popcorn popper. And, you know, we had, you know, you don't, after a few hours, it wasn't, I mean, I don't want to be serving like, four-hour-old popcorn. So we ditched that. Usually it would sell out. So, you know, you make another batch. The one thing is that making the batch of popcorn, the smell would actually, customers at the store, they would come, oh, that smells good. Let's go buy popcorn, right? But the thing is that that also was incentive that it was very difficult. Actually, let me take the word difficult. It was impossible to be making that popcorn and not be eating some of it as you're making it when it's coming out all nice and fresh.
|
Sam:
[38:12]
| Right, of course. You know, anyway, like and, you know, like I want to like I've mentioned on this podcast two of my I've mentioned the Robin Letter thing I want to build. I want to actually build the damn thing.
|
Ivan:
[38:25]
| Well, but I told you I will tell you one thing here. Here is one thing. And I'm not I'm actually this isn't actually this is not a joke one. OK, which I think that you could be working on. You know, we've talked about doing an anti project 2025 platform. Look, look, can I just say this? Your wife is a politician, okay? I'm sorry. You should work on that. You know what? You've got the time. People haven't done that. And I think that if you...
|
Sam:
[38:55]
| I think there are a couple people working on something like that.
|
Ivan:
[38:58]
| Who? Who? Who?
|
Sam:
[38:59]
| I don't know. I've seen some mentions, but none that I was...
|
Ivan:
[39:01]
| Well, whatever. Okay. But you know what? Listen, you've got time on your hands. You've got tools. You can write. And you've got a wife who's a politician. Can I just say that I think that this should be a platform that a politician goes and takes up as that this is our... or should be our future plank to what the hell we got to do in order to knock down this bullshit in the future and that it should have a crafted plan. And I will also mention here, as I was telling- Project 2029. Yeah. And I will tell, and I will also say this, that Sam is eminently qualified for this. And this is not being joked. This is very serious. Usually I know I'm making jokes about this, but no, very seriously talking about, because Sam, as I discovered when I was in college and explained to my wife, is actually very good at fucking writing.
|
Sam:
[39:51]
| You know, you've said that a number of times.
|
Ivan:
[39:55]
| Other people have disagreed. I'm sorry. Bullshit. Those people are morons. They have no idea what the hell they're talking about. Sam is actually very good at writing, okay? So I know that he can structure, and by the way, not for nothing, the 20 years at that fucking company, okay? One thing that is a skill that most people learn at that fucking company is to actually fucking write stupid fucking lengthy documents detailing shit ad nauseum.
|
Sam:
[40:26]
| I have done some of those, although I hated the company process for that so much, I avoided it as much as possible.
|
Ivan:
[40:33]
| But still, you know what? You cannot avoid learning to do so anyway, because it is part of the corporate culture. You know, it's one thing that that has positives, but it has its negatives. That stupid process.
|
Sam:
[40:48]
| So, yeah, for for anybody who doesn't remember my my Robin Letter idea, you can you can go to Robin Letter dot com. I fleshed out like all the the about page, the FAQ, all that kind of stuff. There's nothing other than that done yet, but I. I. filled out that stuff. Now I got time. It's the idea is basically a, an alternative to the kind of social media we have right now. That's all algorithmically generated. That's instead a way to keep in touch with well-defined circles of people that you actually want to share personal information with, but not people you're so close with that you're communicating with them every day anyway so like you know you want to you want to keep in touch with all your cousins or like the circle of friends you had in college or something like that where it is a well-defined group of people and it sort of is a mechanism to do that that is built around also you you take you have your turn you take turns communicating so nobody can like you don't have the one loud guy who always wants to post 16 times a day dominating everything. Instead, you get to talk when it's your turn.
|
Ivan:
[42:01]
| Well, I mean, maybe you could restart.
|
Sam:
[42:02]
| That's a basic idea.
|
Ivan:
[42:03]
| Okay, but you know what I would combine with that Robin letter? Okay, I went to the page. I just sent my feedback expressing my interest. You know what you could combine, though, which this is something Sam used to do back 20-plus years ago. He did this email stack ranking. Okay, all right? of who were the guys that most interacted.
|
Sam:
[42:26]
| I emailed the most.
|
Ivan:
[42:26]
| Or no, who sent me the most emails. Who sent you the most emails. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[42:30]
| Oh, I should catch up. I should count the last 20 years since the last time I did that.
|
Ivan:
[42:36]
| But if you added that to that, you see, the thing is that it would be good to be in a stack ranking to see who the guys that are interacting the most to Robin Letter are. You see? I think that there should be some kind of stack ranking.
|
Sam:
[42:48]
| Well, there should be some gamification.
|
Ivan:
[42:50]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[42:50]
| For sure.
|
Ivan:
[42:51]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[42:51]
| This is probably a V1 or V2 feature, but yes. I want to get just the basics working, but, but yeah, anyway, that's the idea. Go to robinletter.com, express your interest if you're interested in, and like, you know, of all the ideas I've had, this is the one that seems like the most likely that could actually generate some income if I fully executed it. Now, do I think it could replace my actual income? Probably not, but maybe a little trickle of something that's more than the 30 bucks a month we get from this podcast. I've had other people say, well, now you have time. Maybe you can put the time in and really take the podcast to the next level. I'm like, we've been doing this for 18 years, guys. You know.
|
Ivan:
[43:34]
| Well, look, but to be fair, go back on the podcast thing. Reality is that when we did do some marketing.
|
Sam:
[43:42]
| Yes. And we did some activity.
|
Ivan:
[43:45]
| We did get a boost.
|
Sam:
[43:46]
| But the marketing was expensive, though. So we spent a decent penny to get a couple hundred additional listeners.
|
Ivan:
[43:53]
| Actually, we got over a thousand. We gathered over 1,000 Facebook followers from that.
|
Sam:
[43:59]
| We still have several thousand Facebook followers. Facebook followers were cheap but gave us no listeners.
|
Ivan:
[44:06]
| No, no, no, no, no. We did get some listeners from there. Now, probably the conversion was very low.
|
Sam:
[44:13]
| Yeah, the conversion was low. The most effective thing we did on that was when we advertised on the Overcast podcast player that gave us an ad directly on the screen where people were searching for politics podcasts.
|
Ivan:
[44:28]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[44:29]
| That was the most effective. That got us a bunch of new listeners, some of which I believe are still with us today. And I believe Ed found us that way.
|
Ivan:
[44:40]
| So we didn't kill them.
|
Sam:
[44:40]
| Ed, who's on our curmudgeon score Slack all the time.
|
Ivan:
[44:43]
| So we didn't kill them. They're still with us today.
|
Sam:
[44:47]
| Yes. All right.
|
Ivan:
[44:48]
| Well, that's good. Okay, well.
|
Sam:
[44:49]
| Indeed. No, no, no, wait. It wasn't Ed. It was Bob. Bob found us that way.
|
Ivan:
[44:53]
| Bob, Bob, Bob.
|
Sam:
[44:54]
| Ed found us a different way. But it was Bob. Bob found us that way, I believe. I could be wrong. Correct us, Bob.
|
Ivan:
[45:00]
| Well, yeah. Somebody, anybody correct us. I mean, we're, you know, we're, we're, we're terrible.
|
Sam:
[45:04]
| We, but, but yeah, like, you know, but we, we, we spent like, you know, hundreds of dollars to get a few hundred more weekly listeners who faded out over time for the most part. Anyway, there's things we, there's things we could do. I'm doing some cross promotion with the, um, sir, folks. I'm going to be the, you know, Emily was on this podcast a couple of days ago. I'm going to be on their podcast. I'm recording.
|
Ivan:
[45:26]
| I was going to, I was going to mention that. You know, I've seen like some podcasts do a cross podcast. Okay. It's kind of like we did. We need to do a, a, a, a, a thing.
|
Sam:
[45:38]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[45:39]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[45:39]
| We need to do some things.
|
Ivan:
[45:41]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[45:41]
| Anyway. Yes. And, you know, and my dad is chiming in with like, I have some ideas on how you can better monetize election graphs next time around. You know?
|
Ivan:
[45:51]
| There you go.
|
Sam:
[45:52]
| Okay. I think his idea I'm guessing here His idea is probably going to be Post your updates on Substack, That's my guess as to what he's going to say.
|
Ivan:
[46:03]
| No, that's something that you have time for as well.
|
Sam:
[46:05]
| But we shall see. Yeah. And that's actually one of the, you know, okay. I mentioned Robin letter. I've got a, a juke Potter, which I mentioned on here. I've got a vert, which is to discovery of podcasts to like find long tail podcasts. I haven't, I don't have a good idea of how to monetize that one though. That one's more fun, but I want to make a version of that.
|
Ivan:
[46:28]
| Listen, could you just, at the beginning, just tell people, hello, welcome to... And first thing, could you just send us money, please?
|
Sam:
[46:35]
| Oh, there you go.
|
Ivan:
[46:37]
| Is that a bad monetization?
|
Sam:
[46:39]
| I want to also make a book version of Juke Potter, and there I could get affiliate fees pretty easily.
|
Ivan:
[46:45]
| There you go.
|
Sam:
[46:46]
| If anybody ever bought things from there. Ads.
|
Ivan:
[46:49]
| Ads.
|
Sam:
[46:50]
| Yes, of course, ads.
|
Ivan:
[46:52]
| Well, everybody gets ads. And I know that a lot of these people, they get ads based on, you know, they got some kind of thing.
|
Sam:
[47:00]
| And you know, another thing I want to like, and I'm doing the off the wall things that would be fun to do, but probably wouldn't actually successfully make me a living. But like, I want to bring back my random vacations and do something with that.
|
Ivan:
[47:15]
| Well, listen, listen, listen, there's a couple.
|
Sam:
[47:18]
| I think in the modern day for that, in the modern day for that, instead of posting them like text and pictures, I was thinking do video.
|
Ivan:
[47:26]
| Sam, you literally got on NPR. Okay.
|
Sam:
[47:29]
| I did get on. Thanks to John, who's a listener today. He's the one who sent, sent information about me to NPR for that.
|
Ivan:
[47:36]
| You literally, you know, we talk about it was the Savvy Traveler. You literally got on NPR based on that. Okay. So it's not like, look, we talk about a few times that, well, we haven't done anything, whatever. Listen, the podcast got linked and we got a lot of listeners what it was like linked on Huffington Post and so did election graphs as well. Okay. A few times. So that happened. You got on NPR. Okay. As well. We got that. We've had some boosts. if you look at, you know, the chart over the years, you know, we picked up some new listeners who've done some stuff, but the reality is it hasn't been consistent. Now, also, I know that it's not like we've had a consultant come on over here and say, hey, how do we make this podcast more interesting? Well, maybe you guys shouldn't be ranting for hours on end about nonsense, you know, and the podcast shouldn't last forever.
|
Sam:
[48:24]
| Maybe we shouldn't spend the first hour talking about Sam getting laid off.
|
Ivan:
[48:28]
| Well, I actually think, I got to be honest, I do think that this part of the show is one that actually, and I've heard a couple of people say, is more interesting than a lot of the other stuff.
|
Sam:
[48:40]
| Than the policy stuff.
|
Ivan:
[48:41]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[48:41]
| Yeah. I mean, we've gone back and forth over the years, and sometimes we've said, hey, let's just get right to it and jump into the news. And we've heard people be like, oh, we missed that part where you guys just talk. So, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[48:56]
| Yeah. No. This is actually a staple of our show, and it should remain that way. Like, otherwise, you know, we're not if I'm not rambling aimlessly about, I don't know, who knows what the hell.
|
Sam:
[49:07]
| So, yeah, to be absolutely clear, I would love it if one of these random side projects I just mentioned could actually make money. I'm just not like holding my breath about that.
|
Ivan:
[49:16]
| You know, but but but but I do think that part of it is that you just haven't focused on it.
|
Sam:
[49:24]
| Yeah, I mean, look.
|
Ivan:
[49:25]
| We both have jobs, day jobs. I know that my day job really, God, I'm just like, you know, like I had a friend of mine today that texted me today at eight in the morning and I'm like.
|
Sam:
[49:36]
| I'll tell you one example of these things. Like a friend of mine who does the, who does a lot of sort of startups and small businesses, not maybe I should talk to them too, but like I, that's an alien world for me. But in this circumstances, who the hell knows? But, like, they told me at one point, okay, this Robin Letter thing, you get a working prototype up and running. I know all the right people that you could just sell that idea to for, like, you know, a lump sum.
|
Ivan:
[50:06]
| It's not going to take you that long. Listen, I know you, and you've got this employee there that you could, like, make them work on it, okay, on the code. You could get this up and running pretty quickly as a prototype.
|
Sam:
[50:17]
| I think I think the biggest like this kind of idea, like the biggest thing stopping me is the fact that is time. Now I got some time.
|
Ivan:
[50:26]
| Now you got some time. So I think, look, we're going to talk about specific things at first that I would say focus on. Robin letter sounds like a good thing. OK, all right. I write, write, write, do podcast, you know, a promotion, expansion is some kind of plan. Sounds also like a good thing. And then after that, you know, you start looking at some work and some stuff or whatever. But I do think that those two things, like, just right off the bat, and, and, and, as I mentioned, the Project 2029. Those three things is a good three thing, you know, so that this way you're not shooting at every damn thing. Those are three things that you could focus on some time right now to work on that you haven't had time before. And then after a few weeks, you start hitting the job thing and, you know, get set up on that. But work on that, which is stuff that you've been wanting to do. Spent some more time on it and you just haven't had the time to do.
|
Sam:
[51:17]
| Well, and like a few weeks ago, I talked about the huge piles of laundry waiting to be dealt with. I could do laundry.
|
Ivan:
[51:25]
| Well, yes. Oh, I could do laundry.
|
Sam:
[51:28]
| I could clean the house.
|
Ivan:
[51:30]
| You know, Sam was talking about worst case scenarios at some point. And he was talking about, well, what if we have to sell the house and move to a cheaper place? Which that's something that eventually at some point is a possibility also as well. I mean, because, you know, but what I, you know, it's, that's not a crazy thing. I mean, a lot of people, a lot of people at our age actually do that. Okay. They go and like they, they lived in a house that was more expensive and an area closer to work, but then they moved to, to a cheaper place. So that's not crazy. What I said about that was that this was, listen, I will not miss the opportunity. If Sam says that to take the opportunity to, to, to use my addictive OCD to go and like clean up that place. I will, because they can't say no, and I will just take the absolute pleasure at just, oh, my God, I'm going to have a couple of trucks lined up. I'm going to be dumping shit into trash. It's going to be awesome. I'm going to feel great doing this. This is right up my alley.
|
Sam:
[52:35]
| Well, Brandi and I have already talked about logistics. I've said on here before, like our garage is completely full of storage stuff enough so that we've got a separate storage pod next to the house. And we, I've said before on here, we could, we are, you know, yes, we are hoarders.
|
Ivan:
[52:54]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[52:55]
| And fully admit we are hoarders. But at the same time, I know that I am mentally ready to probably get rid of 70% of the stuff in that garage.
|
Ivan:
[53:04]
| Whoa.
|
Sam:
[53:05]
| The problem is that it's all intermingled. It's not sorted in any way. Like there will be one bin that is just labeled miscellaneous crap from 1994. you know or whatever laughter.
|
Sam:
[53:22]
| And so, you know, and the thing is, in that bin, there will be things I want to keep along with things I want to trash. So we need time to actually go through the bin. There is now time to do that. So Randy and I have already talked about in the month of November that's coming up right now, spending more time than we have in years just pulling shit out of the garage and others. We've got several rooms inside the house that are completely full of storage, too, at this point.
|
Sam:
[53:52]
| You know, you have to sort of make your way through the halls to avoid stuff. Yes, we are hoarders. Okay. I admit it. We're hoarders, especially me, but also like the whole family, the whole family is neurodivergent in one way or another. There's ADHD, there's autism, there's OCD, everything is happening here and the house reflects it. So, but we have time now we can go through a whole bunch of this shit and make room. And so we're going to spend some time in November, at least that's the goal right now. But you know, anyway, I, you know, we got, I got lots of stuff to do. The way I put it, and I had like an exit conversation with my skip level, the guy I've known for 20 years. And, you know, you know, when talking about how I'm feeling and stuff, I'm like, look, right now I'm feeling good. It's a little bit of a relief. I'm feeling optimistic about things. Talk to me in six months if I haven't found any money-making possibilities, and it may be a whole different story. But right now, I'm feeling good. So... With that, shall we take a break?
|
Ivan:
[55:04]
| Let's take a break, yes.
|
Sam:
[55:06]
| I think there's no need for a movie or TV. The next thing is actually a TV show. So next week, the original Twilight Zone.
|
Ivan:
[55:15]
| Oh!
|
Sam:
[55:16]
| Alex and I finished watching every episode from beginning to end.
|
Ivan:
[55:19]
| Every episode of the original Twilight Zone? Damn. I mean, I've watched a lot of episodes of the original Twilight Zone. I can't say that I have watched all of them, But I definitely, definitely have watched a lot of episodes of the original Twilight Zone. Absolutely.
|
Sam:
[55:34]
| So anyway, that's next week. We'll save it till next week. Let's take a break and we will come back. And since basically the whole first segment was just me talking about being laid off and possibilities and all that.
|
Ivan:
[55:48]
| Here's a reality. I was telling to somebody today. It's not like I know it's it's a but first. Yes. But it is a relevant thing that is going on right now in this fantastic Trump economy. I mean, I mean.
|
Sam:
[56:01]
| I mean, I mean, the same the same day that, you know, there were layoffs at my company. Meadow was also laying people off. There have been recent layoffs at UPS. There have been recent layoffs, a whole bunch of.
|
Ivan:
[56:11]
| But we've got other we've got friends, people that we know. I mean, I've got. Listen, with CDC, of course.
|
Sam:
[56:18]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[56:18]
| CDC.
|
Sam:
[56:19]
| We talked about the federal stuff.
|
Ivan:
[56:22]
| Yeah. I mean, we have a, you know, our. One of our friends from, Jesus Christ, from Pittsburgh, her husband, they got laid off at CDC. And, well, actually, by the way, that layoff, I didn't realize, you didn't actually say this, there's an injunction against that layoff. The court did issue an injunction against them for that. So, right now, there's been a court order that stopped that layoff from happening. So, but still, the government's closed, so it's not getting paid anyway. But, yeah, but there was an injunction against that. So he got laid off. I got a friend of mine in Texas that also got laid off, worked for a German company. He got laid off. I mentioned there was a friend of mine down here that he worked for, you know, your damn company. And he basically, I mean, he was kind of forced out because they told, hey, either relocate to Brazil or you need to, you can't keep your job. I'm like, he's like, fuck you.
|
Sam:
[57:18]
| I do want to mention one more thing about this round of laughs because it doesn't apply. I've been there almost 20 years. I got a decent severance. I'm all well settled where I am. I have seen quite a few reports of the opposite situation.
|
Ivan:
[57:31]
| Oh, God. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[57:32]
| Someone where someone was just relocated by the company across the country.
|
Ivan:
[57:38]
| That was your company.
|
Sam:
[57:40]
| They've been in the job six months or something and then are laid off. They're now in the new place. They've moved. They've ripped apart their whole life. They haven't even been at the company long enough to have a performance review cycle. And, okay, you're out. And the severance is nothing because they're basic. I mean, there is a minimum severance that they did. It's like four weeks or something.
|
Ivan:
[58:03]
| Well, they got the 90 days, right?
|
Sam:
[58:05]
| They got the 90 days plus four weeks or something, I think, is the minimum. But, but still like, you know, I I'm in a position where I can be like, oh, we got eight months of runway. There are a lot of people who've been there last time who are like. I'm fucked.
|
Ivan:
[58:20]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[58:21]
| They just completely fucked me. I just started. I moved because of them. And now I'm screwed.
|
Ivan:
[58:27]
| I, I, those I find that's just, I mean, those are so egregious. And by the way, when, when the CEO actually admits, Oh, we didn't do it because we, we were short on money. It's a culture thing. I, I honestly, I wanted to punch him in the face.
|
Sam:
[58:43]
| And of course, a lot of people are saying this is all AI related to.
|
Ivan:
[58:46]
| It's all. Actually, he also said that it wasn't AI related.
|
Sam:
[58:49]
| I know he did. I know he did in our case.
|
Ivan:
[58:51]
| He flat out said so. So he said it wasn't. But here's the thing. It wasn't about money. It wasn't about AI. It was just. Just. I actually. Honestly, I wanted the stock to go up, which actually to a certain extent in one way actually benefit you as well.
|
Sam:
[59:11]
| And let me say this flat out. You know, I have left my company. but i still have a bunch of their stock in my 401k i still have one last final stock grant coming to me in the next few weeks i am all about their stock continuing to go up.
|
Ivan:
[59:29]
| I'm like yeah just.
|
Sam:
[59:30]
| Just go fine fine just just you know i i'm not i'm not like oh man i'm resentful crash no.
|
Ivan:
[59:38]
| No no no don't crash the stock fuck oh no no not not right now no.
|
Sam:
[59:43]
| Exactly okay let's let's take a break and when we come back yvonne will pick the newsy topics for us i'm me i'm done so three four five six i i always count to figure out the breaks i should like have this done in my head but you know like you said you know we could professionalize the show so like i could i i would edit out where I'm like, which break will I fuck that? No, like we'll change in other ways. But like, it's part of our charm, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:00:12]
| It is part of the charm.
|
Sam:
[1:00:14]
| There you go. Okay. Here, here, here, here comes. Okay, we are back. Yvonne, where shall we start the news portion of the show?
|
Ivan:
[1:01:00]
| All right, I think that the place to start is with what the heck is going on in Washington. With the shutdown, with the SNAP benefits, with negotiations, with the nuclear option. I'll say it like Sam says it.
|
Sam:
[1:01:17]
| Nuclear. Nuclear. Nuclear.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:21]
| Yes, the nuclear option. So, Sam, what's going on in Washington, huh? So, so are we getting any closer to ending the shutdown now?
|
Sam:
[1:01:31]
| So maybe, maybe.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:34]
| You say maybe. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:01:36]
| Well, the reason, so let's put it this way. To start with, for most of the length of this shutdown, the politics have been aligned in such a way that it was in neither party's interest to end it. Okay? The Democrats were better off keeping it shut down because people were blaming the Republicans. If you're talking about it, forget for the moment. We will get back to it. Forget for the moment the people being hurt by the government being shut down.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:05]
| Right, right, right.
|
Sam:
[1:02:05]
| But from a purely political point of view, people were blaming the Republicans so it was good for the Democrats. On the other hand, on the Republican side, they couldn't believe that people weren't blaming the Democrats. Plus, a lot of the policy things they want to do are— Well.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:23]
| Because—wait, wait, if I understood, because Mike Johnson said that the Democrats run our government. They are the party in power. That's what he said, right? I mean, is that wrong?
|
Sam:
[1:02:35]
| Yeah. Yes, that's wrong.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:40]
| You know, how the hell does that bastard have the fucking brass balls to get up there and claim that the Democrats are in charge of the government? Now, well, I say that, and I'm like, why the hell did I say that? This is the new GOP. They just say shit like this regularly. That is false. And a lot of their people believe it regularly anyway. And that's why they keep saying even more egregiously fucking false shit because their followers, so many of them just believe it anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:03:11]
| Yeah, it works. So look, the and for the Republicans as well, it. Of course, they were doing it anyway, but this shutdown made it easier. You disable more agencies, you fire more people. And also, it also makes the case, like, the longer things stay shut and things don't fall apart, the stronger the case that we don't need that stuff anyway. Right? Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:45]
| Look, this is listen, this is the same case that all these fucking people make every time. And I'm talking about historically, I'm not just talking about the Republicans and the Democrats. I'm talking about this kind of governments across the world. You know, the best case that I've always had. Venezuela in the early 2000s, OK, Hugo Chavez goes in and he is demanding that the oil company deliver ever larger amounts of money, far more than the company could give without impacting future revenues, basically impacting the company long term structurally, where it would get damaged in the long run, where it could not sustain its level of profitability and production. production.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:36]
| The Penevesa was one of the most professionally run oil companies in the world. They had a reputation for being the most efficient oil company in the world, okay? The number of employees per production, it was like, you know, through the roof. The Venezuelans, the oil employees, they put it this way. Right now, I went to Guiana, I was talking about their oil exploration. There's so many Venezuelan expats over there working there. You go to Canada, you You go to like the oil sands or whatever. There are large communities of those expats because those guys are so, so good at their job. They have been in Houston, in Canada, in everywhere where there are large projects. Those guys were highly desirable. So Maduro, if Chavez said, ah, you guys are idiots. You don't know what you're talking about. Fire them all. Okay. And for the first year, oh, you see, they were all lying. You see, they're still making oil. You see, nothing happened. Yeah, nothing happened. Right now, with time, because this is the thing, none of those things have an impact immediately. 20 years later now.
|
Sam:
[1:05:40]
| Have we had a recurring theme on this show, Yvonne, about delayed results and how people have a really hard time understanding that an action now may have an impact five or 10 years down the road?
|
Ivan:
[1:05:54]
| Exactly. And that's exactly what happened to Venezuela, where, sure, the first couple of years, no impact. 10 years later, their oil production was down in half. Now, 20 years later, Venezuelan oil production is down like 75, 80% down from where it was. It's down so bad that they used to export distillates like gasoline, diesel, that kind of stuff. They have to import all of that, okay? They don't even make it. In Venezuela, you used to go to a gas station, used to pay four or five cents a gallon, a fuel. Four or five cents a gallon, Sam, okay? You could go, if you took your boat and you took it to Venezuela, where I would take a boat to the Bahamas and it would cost me like $2,000 to fill up. I would fill it up in Venezuela for like $10, $20, okay? It's ridiculous. Now they have to import fuel. Now, they've lost their entire energy independence. But that was the effect of, you know, it wasn't an immediate effect. And this is the same thing that they're doing with the federal government. Okay? Yeah, you see? Nothing happened right away, right? You know, you see? Nothing happened. But all of these effects.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:12]
| It's just they're going to be in the future. You just don't see them, like, right away. And that's the thing. All these idiots all rely on, you see, right now, nothing happens. You know, and it's only when something later in the future blows up, but that's when it's going to be evident. And that's what they're relying on, that there are people, that people, like we said, that they don't understand that the causes and effects are going to be further down the road. Now, now, immediately right now, there is one. Listen, I will say on the opposite side, Sam, look, as much as I know that there are certain things that they've been trying to take, you know, action. And on some of them, they've been stopped. Like I talked about those layoffs. The judges stopped them on that one. the snap the snap money judge also went and like stopped them on that one like right now they said that they still have to pay snap but look let me tell you something on some other fronts it's actually positive i don't know if you've noticed look all these like decrees on like health policy and whatever and all of this bullshit where we kept getting all this bullshit i've realized that we haven't been getting none none of that destructive shit anymore because the government is shut down oh.
|
Sam:
[1:08:17]
| You you mean like the rfk jr bullshit and anti-health stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:22]
| Yes so there are a whole bunch of actions like like that on the opposite side that yes they have been the fact that the governor shut down is why i said a month ago what the fuck just keep it shut down anyway so there are a number of destructive things that they have been doing that have been slowed down or stopped by the fact that the government is shut down right now.
|
Sam:
[1:08:46]
| Unfortunately, like, the deportation and border patrol stuff isn't part of that.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:52]
| But there is some stuff that has been slowed down like that. Hey, and Sam, did you hear that RFK Jr. this week? What did he say about Tylenol, Sam? What happened?
|
Sam:
[1:09:02]
| Maybe the proof isn't quite there yet. Maybe... He backed off slightly from what he said before.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:09]
| Listen, like.
|
Sam:
[1:09:10]
| I thought we'd nailed this, Yvonne. I thought we now knew exactly what this was and how to deal with it. Just keep the pregnant people from taking Tylenol, and we've eliminated the scourge from our society forever.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:24]
| The scourge of people like us. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:09:27]
| Yes. No, look, and this is where I was starting to say it. So far, the politics had been aligned, so both parties had an interest in keeping it going. As things become more painful, that starts to change. Now, you mentioned the court rulings, which I think changed things once again. Before the court rulings saying that, okay, you have to pay SNAP anyway, which there's still some stuff to play out there. But it was looking like the Republicans were actually getting very, very nervous about missing the SNAP payments. Because one thing that, you know, look, as much as the Republicans go on about, like, you know, the welfare state and like, you know, all of these evil brown people taking our money to for food stamps they don't need and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The vast majority. The percentage of people using these resources, on average, is significantly larger in red states.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:30]
| Yes, it is.
|
Sam:
[1:10:32]
| You know, and is larger in rural areas than in urban areas.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:37]
| Why is that, Sam?
|
Sam:
[1:10:40]
| You know, it's a complete mystery to me, Von. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:44]
| It's amazing how keeping a whole entire class of people like uneducated and poor, not giving them education and not giving any benefits. It's amazing how it just completely keeps them in a cycle of poverty, Sam. It's stunning.
|
Sam:
[1:10:59]
| Yeah. Interesting. So, look, the Republicans were starting to freak out that the shutdown was actually hurting their folks. I don't think we talked about it on a show. We talked about it on Slack as well. Marjorie Taylor Greene's getting freaked out. out that the Democrats are actually right about health care benefits.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:17]
| Yeah, I know.
|
Sam:
[1:11:18]
| As well, because, wow, this is hurting your people.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:23]
| My family, literally.
|
Sam:
[1:11:25]
| In the case of MTG, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:27]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:11:28]
| And so I think they were getting nervous about this and the politics was starting to change. You had Donald Trump starting to pull out the nuclear option thing and potentially support that, which a lot of Republican leadership had rejected as, no, no, no, no, no, that's not a possibility. I will call out for details on this. Talking Points Memo had a good article on this published on October 31st. It's titled Trump wants to abolish the filibuster. Please proceed degenerate.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:01]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:12:01]
| Or degenerate. Now, this is a behind the paywall article at TPM. But for those interested, if you look for my Blue Sky account, I posted a gift link to it there. Well, I reposted. Josh Marshall, who runs Talking Point Memo, posted a gift link, and I reposted that. So you can look at his account or mine and find a gift link to it so you can read it free. But he talks about how Democrats should actually, say, bring it on.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:31]
| I agree. He's right. He's right.
|
Sam:
[1:12:33]
| You know, we've talked on the show.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:35]
| And that should be part of your platform, Sam, Project 92010.
|
Sam:
[1:12:38]
| Yes, killing the filibuster.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:39]
| We got to kill the filibuster. To hell with this. It's got to be over.
|
Sam:
[1:12:41]
| Josh points out something we've said on this show a number of times, which is the way our government is structured right now, which a big part of it is the filibuster, has broken the connection between elections and results.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:58]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:13:00]
| And the vast majority of people don't understand how this all works. Most people don't even, well, hell, I get the feeling that lots of people never even had middle school civics. But even the people who do, most of them weren't paying attention, don't remember the details. And certainly the esoteric nature of the filibuster in the Senate, something that most people don't get. And so you have, I don't get it. I voted for the Democrat for president because they said they wanted X, Y, Z, and I didn't get it. So fuck them next time.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:37]
| But could we be clear on one thing? Okay, you do realize, right, that Biden, even with the filibuster, got so much of the shit that he promised done.
|
Sam:
[1:13:47]
| Yes, he did. He did. Which they still didn't get credit for. But, you know, but but on a more fundamental basis, simply from a structure of government perspective, you know, even even with the structure we have, clearly elections do have consequences. You only have to look at how the last 10 months have gone to know that. Yeah. But if you one of if the Republicans actually were. Yeah. I I'm going back for like, if they actually had free reign, they had no Democrats couldn't stop them with a filibuster. Democrats couldn't stop. Then you get what you pay for, you know, you know, you, and this goes for the Democrats. If they win too, you elect a party into office and then you actually get to live under their policies. And then the next election you adapt accordingly. Now, I think the Republicans this time have been so strong and you, in terms of actually implementing their agenda anyway, that you see it in the polls. You see them plummeting in all kinds of ways over the last few months because people don't actually like it. But basically- Right now.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:07]
| I just checked, by the way, a silver bulletin has Trump's net approval at its lowest since the election. He has at the lowest point.
|
Sam:
[1:15:13]
| And the economists average for for Donald Trump approval shows that this week for the first time ever, not only did he hit a low for this term, he had a low for both terms. He's at the lowest he has ever been in either one of his two presidencies. So, but hitting back to that, if you have the effect, then the elections mean more instead of people just being cynical and saying, it doesn't matter who I vote for, nothing happens anyway, which, and not understanding how things work. But and the Democrats, we talked about how Democrats should have eliminated the filibuster and done X, Y, Z when Biden first got in. Manchin and Sinema stopped it from even being a possibility. And and frankly, Biden didn't really want it either. He's a Senate institutionalist. He loves the filibuster.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:06]
| Look, he was trying to get back to normal.
|
Sam:
[1:16:08]
| And that was lots of folks were trying to get back to normal.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:12]
| So that was their whole his thought. And listen, you can argue whether he was right or wrong about that. That's another thing. But but what he wanted is his plan. OK, was, hey, I'm not going to do that because by blowing that up, then making creating making this worse. And so, therefore, let's not do that. And I understand his argument. I disagree. I think I disagreed with it, but I understand his argument. OK. All right.
|
Sam:
[1:16:36]
| And the thing is here, there will be a political hit for whoever actually eliminates the filibuster first. Now, what the Republicans have been doing, people pointed out they've used the nuclear option twice in the last six months, and nobody's practically noticed. Like, because they've done it for specific things. Instead of just saying there is no more filibuster anymore.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:57]
| Filibuster?
|
Sam:
[1:16:57]
| They've done it for specific things.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:58]
| It's a filibuster.
|
Sam:
[1:16:59]
| They could do it for this. It's a filibuster. Nuclear filibuster. what is this you want me to enunciate and actually speak properly this is crazy talk here oh i've got all this time i could take like a public oh oh oh my god i i i could go do toast masters or something let's not go crazy here okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:22]
| Shall we okay come on give me a break okay no.
|
Sam:
[1:17:25]
| The the point is there might be a political hit for being the first one to do this but if the Republicans do it for you and then you take power next time, then by all means, it's done. Just go.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:37]
| Do it.
|
Sam:
[1:17:37]
| Just go. Do it. Do all the stuff you want to do that you couldn't otherwise. But Josh Marshall points out in this article as well, he feels it's actually very unlikely, even with Donald Trump saying, just go nuclear, kill this thing and move on. There are a number of Republicans who, just like Manchin and Sinema on the Democratic side, are going to be like, no, no, no, no. We don't want to get rid of the filibuster. But some combination of Democrats and Republicans might be able to do it, but the Democrats aren't going to want to kill the filibuster for the Republican bill. So it's probably unlikely that it'll happen at this point. And I'll say the court saying you have to pay SNAP anyway probably diminishes- It takes this off the table for now. Trump was bringing this on the table because this was about to start being painful for people.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:31]
| But it was because he decided to do it. It's not because he had to. He was like, he had been unilaterally deciding to try to stop the SNAP payments.
|
Sam:
[1:18:41]
| Well, people have also, well, yeah, because there were all sorts of arguments that they actually could keep going anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:46]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:18:47]
| Now, what's actually happening with the legal case is Trump has filed back to the court saying, OK, you're mandating that we pay this. Tell us the right legal way to do it because we didn't think there was one. And so they're asking the court to do that.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:01]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:19:02]
| And we'll see we'll see how that goes. I'm sure the court will respond in an appropriate way. And but I think it takes the pressure off, at least for now, because, again, to end this shutdown, one or both sides, the political pressure needs to flip where they feel like they are clear. clear their people are hurting and they are hurting politically by letting it go on longer with donald trump saying let's use the nuclear option that was like oh okay if he pushes that we could be done in days my guess is because of the snap stuff he's going to back off on that for at least a little while but there is also an argument that, He's just bored and wants to move on.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:46]
| Listen, listen. Are you kidding? Is he bored? I'm sorry. What was he posting?
|
Sam:
[1:19:52]
| Did you see the pictures of the new bathroom?
|
Ivan:
[1:19:53]
| That's exactly what I was going to say. Listen, you know what the worst thing is? And I saw it before you shared it on the Slack. And I saw it and I'm like, nah, fuck. I'm not going to share this. Come on, man. This is such bullshit. This fucking asshole. What the hell? But Sam did share it where, you know, Trump was obsessing this week about, renovations to the Lincoln bathroom and how what he wants to do is take it from where it looks now, which it looks period appropriate to make it look like any generic bathroom at some kind of Trump hotel.
|
Sam:
[1:20:28]
| He actually did this, right? This is not a plan. He actually did this.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:31]
| No, no, no. I thought that, no, that was, I don't know. Didn't you see that he put a whole bunch of different alternative options no no i thought no no no no okay it and my understanding is that this is in the planning stage right now and there was a place there where he showed a whole bunch of different how about this color how about this color how about this color this is what the fucking president is focusing on a goddamn bathroom rebuttal and oh no no no.
|
Sam:
[1:20:59]
| No no wait i i brought up the truth social post it's i renovated past tense the lincoln bedroom.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:06]
| No but did you see okay hold on did you i thought that.
|
Sam:
[1:21:11]
| No no no it's it's done.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:13]
| No it was renovated in 1940s architect of green style i did it in black i did it.
|
Sam:
[1:21:18]
| Yes the other one he showed was what it looked like before oh my god.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:25]
| Yeah, very, yes, this looks like an 1800s bathroom.
|
Sam:
[1:21:31]
| The old one?
|
Ivan:
[1:21:32]
| The new one, I'm being sarcastic. This looks like some fucking generic bathroom at any goddamn luxury hotel.
|
Sam:
[1:21:41]
| He says this was very appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:45]
| Uh-huh. Yeah? Sure. this is what any fucking you go into any luxury hotel right now and honestly because they're all the I mean, the bathrooms get kind of boring and all these, this is what they all fucking look like. If you go to Ritz-Carlton, the forces...
|
Sam:
[1:22:08]
| Like marble everywhere.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:09]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or a lot of these, you know, mansions right now that they're making all over the place.
|
Sam:
[1:22:14]
| It feels like it would be too slippery.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:17]
| Yeah, I mean, especially because he put all that marble on the fucking floor. Usually you try to put some kind of like tile on the floor that is like not as slippery as the fucking marble. But he won't be using the bathroom anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:22:30]
| I was about to say hopefully he will and you know a slip could happen.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:34]
| Oh god yeah please yes could he just go you know what that would be fantastic he goes takes a shit he hasn't pulled up his pants he slides he falls he breaks his head open and that's how he dies and we get pictures of him you know in.
|
Sam:
[1:22:50]
| His new bathroom.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:51]
| Yeah in his new bathroom dead perfect But anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:22:57]
| Back to the shutdown and how it's going to play out. I think the snap things buys them some more time. Yeah. Unless he is just bored and wants to have it done with, which, you know, the Republicans could end this at any time they wanted to. But I think they still have incentive to keep it open. I mean, for one, Johnson is keeping the House away until the Senate resolves it. Part of their pressure plan here is instead of engaging in negotiations, the idea is we will keep this through until the Senate passes the bill as it was passed by the Republicans in the House on a party line vote, which means one of two things. Either you kill the filibuster about it or you get a bunch of Democrats to flip and vote for it. The Democrats' view is we want to propose a new bill in the Senate that reopens government, but also undoes some of the tax credit things for Obamacare that were in the big, beautiful bill, which was not beautiful. But and the Republican position is we're not even going to talk. We will talk about all that stuff, but only once the government is open.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:19]
| Obviously, I am showing right now, Sam, my reaction to this on video, which is I give these assholes a big, fat middle finger because I don't trust them, you know, on them. You can't just give them anything like that. Oh, yeah. Oh, then we'll talk about it. No. A bunch of fucking liars. No, you can't trust them.
|
Sam:
[1:24:40]
| Well, this is something that, by the way, at various points in the past, the Democrats have agreed to deals that are structured like, you know, give us what you want. Give us – no, the – put it in this context, sorry. Reopen the government now and we'll give you a vote on that thing you want. And it's a vote the Democrats will lose, guaranteed. And the Democrats are, okay, we'll have the vote. We've made our point. We've gotten our message across. We'll take the vote and lose, but we'll reopen the government. No, don't. You've got this is the one piece of leverage you have right now.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:21]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:25:21]
| You do not give in in exchange for a vote you know you're going to lose.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:26]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:25:27]
| Now, you want if if you're going to make a deal here, then it has to be we do we do the thing first. First, we get the thing we want, and then we'll give you the thing you want.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:40]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:25:40]
| You know, and the thing we want is not a vote. The thing we want is the actual result.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:45]
| The actual result.
|
Sam:
[1:25:46]
| And or you force them to kill the filibuster and push it through on their own terms, in which case they own the results.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:54]
| Let them own, you know, throwing millions of people off their health insurance, which is what they're doing effectively.
|
Sam:
[1:26:01]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:02]
| I mean, you know, the one thing is that this is so politically suicidal for them. I don't even understand why the hell they keep insisting on it because it's nuts. The reality is...
|
Sam:
[1:26:13]
| And the latest polls have the general public blaming Republicans for this on a two-to-one basis.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:17]
| Exactly. And if they go and get to January and tens of millions of people lose their health insurance, how's that going to turn out?
|
Sam:
[1:26:28]
| Right. And also it's been pointed out, House comes back into session, you immediately get this one person, one Democrat sworn in, you immediately get the Epstein vote as well. Yep. And which will, you know, they just have the 218 needed for the discharge position petition. But the word is that if this actually came to a vote, it would not just pass, but pass overwhelmingly on a bipartisan fashion, because Republicans don't want to put their name against this either. And so that's part of, you know, Johnson's reason for staying away as well as the shutdown theatrics. So we shall see. My prediction right now, government staying shut down a while. I think we're going to beat the 35 day record. Oh, we're fucking better. You know, honestly, I wouldn't be completely shocked if the government stays shut down straight through the midterms. Keep it shut down a year.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:29]
| I don't know about that.
|
Sam:
[1:27:30]
| I would be a little surprised if it goes that long.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:32]
| Yeah, I would be surprised by that.
|
Sam:
[1:27:34]
| Because pain points will start piling up over time. And at some point, it will become painful enough to start greasing the wheels. We're just not there yet. Okay, Vaughn, next topic.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:48]
| Well, we don't have a lot of time for another topic. Well, wait, I picked the first topic. It's your turn.
|
Sam:
[1:27:55]
| Well, yeah, I said you could have the whole second segment since the whole first segment was about me.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:00]
| Well, okay. But I said that I don't have that much.
|
Sam:
[1:28:06]
| We can wrap things up pretty soon then. Yeah, we can start wrapping things up.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:10]
| I think we actually, the only thing that's here that we haven't covered that's on the list of subjects. I mean, we don't, you know, talking about the New York mayor race, which is not on the list. I mean, I don't know. Do we want to talk about that? What do you think? Two options here. Two options. There is this deciding to win thing or the New York mayor election.
|
Sam:
[1:28:35]
| Well, actually, I think they're related.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:38]
| So we can bring them together. Okay, so let's bring them together. All right.
|
Sam:
[1:28:42]
| So first of all, Mom Donnie's going to win. Mom Donnie's going to win. Like he is so far ahead on all the polls.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:47]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:28:48]
| We, what's his name? Jeffries finally reluctantly gave an endorsement. And it is so clear. It's like, I don't really want to do this, but I guess I will. Schumer has not.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:01]
| Yeah, Schumer has not.
|
Sam:
[1:29:02]
| As of, you know, us recording, Schumer is still saying, well, I'm talking to the guy. I'm thinking about somebody who's like, the election's in a couple of days. Who are you going to vote for? And he's like, I don't know. And he walks away. Right. Look, this is just.
|
Sam:
[1:29:22]
| And and this ties to the so deciding to win is a policy research strategy paper, whatever you want to call it, from some Democratic think tank that basically expresses the centrist Democrat view that. Oh, God, people have been pushing for a long time that it basically is. And I'll fully admit, I did not read the whole thing. there were a bunch of stuff things going on this week as you were busy first segment there were things going on my mind was elsewhere i did not read the whole thing but in summary as i understand it this is a recapitulation of the view that basically democrats should take take a handful run to the center it's basically run to the center and it's also basically be poll driven Take things that pull well, double down on them, take things that pull less well, and ignore them. You know, push them to the back burner, minimize them, try not to talk about them. The end result of this is things like, yeah, the advice that keeps being given over and over and over again. Talk about, and the thing that's weird is.
|
Sam:
[1:30:41]
| Sometimes what people say to try to do with this stuff doesn't actually align with the polls. Like, for instance, they'll say the kitchen table issues only. Talk about the economy. Talk about jobs. Talk about that. But don't talk about immigration because we're weak there. We're actually the Democratic positions on immigration poll better than the Republican.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:00]
| That's what I'm saying. This is the thing. I don't. This whole stupid playbook.
|
Sam:
[1:31:07]
| Now, messaging is bad. Like the Republicans somehow push through this as a threat and get it internalized in people's heads. But when you ask the people about specific things, like, do you think we should be deporting non-criminals who've lived here for 20 years but happened to come here illegally at the beginning? Most people say no. You know, for instance.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:27]
| This whole damn thing gets back down to the policy wonky thing where, you know, if you go down on all the Biden accomplishments in his four years and you ask people, say, independently, hey, what do you think of this? What do you think of that? I'm sure they all poll great. Did that translate into winning, Sam?
|
Sam:
[1:31:50]
| Not often so.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:52]
| No, no, it does not. And the whole thing, it goes back down to, and I said this and I'll say it again, the Republicans had two very vociferous messages that were bullshit, but that cut through to people. One is the threat of the trans movement is going to destroy America. And, you know, the other one was, the other one is that the Democrats are pro-abortionists. they want more abortions oh.
|
Sam:
[1:32:24]
| Yeah okay and brown people are scary.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:26]
| And brown people are scary yes yes that those are the three things and and they have nothing to do with facts nothing to do with anything and the thing is that the democrats counter argument to those were basically to not address them.
|
Sam:
[1:32:41]
| Yes and and you know the.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:45]
| Sam, people, listen, that trans thing, I keep being, you know, shocked how the Democrats, especially the leadership in general, misunderstand how deep that message cut through to people and their underlying prejudices about something they don't understand.
|
Sam:
[1:33:11]
| The thing is, though, the key approach difference I think here is important is Democrats, because of that, decided to just be quiet, avoid the issue.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:25]
| Avoid it!
|
Sam:
[1:33:25]
| And I think the... The way to counter that is not avoid the issue because that gives ground that it's like, oh, you're right on trans.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:35]
| Yeah, you're accepting that what their argument is true.
|
Sam:
[1:33:38]
| You're accepting their argument is true. You're accepting their framing of the issue. Instead, it has to be a vigorous defense. No, you are wrong. You are bigots.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:49]
| You are exaggerating this whole thing about men going and switching and women to sports. You're talking about a tiny number of people. You're talking about all this bullshit about them. It's a lie. All this thing about that is a lie. This entire thing that there's indoctrination of people is a lie. This whole thing that I mean.
|
Sam:
[1:34:12]
| The entire thing is like also and I want to get it. It's not just that it's a lie. It's also you are you are fundamentally wrong on how you treat. Assume it was right. You need to treat these people better. You need to vigorously make the case for your side.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:31]
| But remember, the main commercial, what they had was a guy dressed as a woman competing in women's sports. You see, this is the thing. You're getting back into the detail of the wonk. The thing was, they showed some fucking guy during major live TV events in the U.S., during the NFL playoffs or whatever, showing some fucking guy dressed as a woman competing in women's sports. You know what the ad right after should have shown? This is a complete lie. This is not what's happening. This is absolutely false. And they're trying to scare you into vilifying a small, you know, a minority of Americans right now into vilifying them over something that isn't true.
|
Sam:
[1:35:19]
| Yes, it's not true. But at the same time, like I said, you can't, in any way, throw these marginalized communities under the bus either. You have to show, like, you have to be like.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:32]
| This is a group of people that should be defended. But my point is that by staying quiet, they didn't defend them.
|
Sam:
[1:35:37]
| No.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:38]
| The narrative went and like everybody, so many people that know little on the subject because the low information voter, all they saw is that. That's the image they got.
|
Sam:
[1:35:48]
| The counter is stick to your position and defend it vigorously. and not cower in the corners. Like, over and over again, in the years prior to things going sideways with Donald Trump, things were moving, like, when confronted with, like, let's look, gay marriage. At one point, like, the polling on that was people couldn't even imagine it. People started making the case.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:22]
| By the way, can I make a, I want to make a point because we have been talking about Newsom. Do you realize who the mayor, who the first mayor that started issuing marriage certificates to gay people was? And I did not know this until about a couple of weeks ago.
|
Sam:
[1:36:37]
| The first mayor?
|
Ivan:
[1:36:38]
| Yeah. It was Gavin Newsom, San Francisco.
|
Sam:
[1:36:41]
| Was it Gavin Newsom?
|
Ivan:
[1:36:42]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:36:43]
| I remember.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:43]
| By the way. By the way. I know because we're talking shit about how Newsom takes the winning position. This was at a time when none of the mainstream Democrats, including Barack Obama, were for gay marriage.
|
Sam:
[1:36:56]
| Right, right. Now, my point, though, is that that is an issue where we have moved from gay marriage being an obscure position to it having super majority support. In a very rapid period of time because of advocacy for that, because of normalization of like, no, you know, gay people shouldn't be ostracized and marginalized and made fun of.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:24]
| Let's be clear about this. Project 2025 wants to abolish gay marriage, too, by the way.
|
Sam:
[1:37:27]
| No, I know. I know. Absolutely. And, but all this happened through not, oh, sort of public opinion naturally changed on its own. It happened because people were aggressively pushing the idea and also making sure that there was exposure. Like, you know, it's you're you're you you make it so that people can be out and known and that, you know, your uncle is gay.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:59]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:37:59]
| Or that you are. And now, like that, you know, you have friends and family that are trans.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:05]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:38:06]
| You know, and, you know, you want to show like, no, what they're going, what they are advocating will hurt people. And you shove that in front of people's face. Same with immigration. You need to counter the, oh, brown people are scary, immigration bad, MS-13, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, with no. Look, here is the guy who waits the tables at your favorite restaurant. You know, and I don't want to stereotype that either. There are lots of highly successful rich people as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:38]
| No, no, no. But we're talking about the illegal. And a lot of the illegal governments, unfortunately, you know, most of them cannot get.
|
Sam:
[1:38:46]
| Cannot get those kinds of jobs. Exactly. Because of their documentation.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:48]
| Exactly. Yeah. Even though they may have the skills. But when they come to the United States, many times they may be doctors, they may be nurses, they may be whatever the hell it is that you want, but they cannot get those jobs. And so they go and they have to take low paying menial jobs in order to make sense meat because they cannot get those more skillful jobs, even though they have the skills.
|
Sam:
[1:39:11]
| And look, after all of these deportations started happening, you start seeing all these stories of Trump supporters who are like, oh, man, I voted for Trump and now they deported my wife or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:25]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:39:25]
| You know, these are these are stories that you could have dug up beforehand and been like, he is talking about deporting your wife. He's talking about deporting the person who takes care of your lawn or help, you know, or whatever, all of these things. and bring it and humanize it and say, look, these are the people that are trying to hurt.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:48]
| It makes you very tasty tacos in many cases.
|
Sam:
[1:39:50]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:51]
| They're quite tasty.
|
Sam:
[1:39:51]
| No, look, the point is, though, on all of these, defend those positions. And getting back to Mom Donnie for a second, I think one of the reasons Democratic leadership is freaking out about this is that they're like, oh, my God, he's a socialist. He's in front of all these things. This may work in New York, but in the rest of the country, it's going to kill us, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:14]
| He's the mayor of New York, okay? You know, fuck this. He needs to, you know...
|
Sam:
[1:40:20]
| He won the damn Democratic nomination as a Democratic leader. You should be fucking supporting him.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:27]
| And I'm sorry, but you know what? Aside from the fact that maybe he made some statements in the past of certain things that maybe I disagree with, the reality is that his positions that he's had for a while— And most of those are overstated anyway. And most of those are overstated. Yeah, you know, that's what I'm saying. Aside from maybe some statements in the past, the reality is that his—what he is advocating for the city, it's not bad.
|
Sam:
[1:40:50]
| Fairly normal stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:51]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:40:52]
| But look, here's the other thing. He is young. He is charismatic. People are excited about him.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:59]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:40:59]
| And you're shitting on him?
|
Ivan:
[1:41:01]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:41:02]
| This is exactly what the party needs.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:04]
| This is exactly what the party needs.
|
Sam:
[1:41:07]
| Young, charismatic people who people are excited about and who are energizing the voters. And this, again, going back to deciding to win again, deciding to win is all about, this strategy that has failed multiple times over the last decade and a half, right? Which is Democrats being like, we have to figure out how to win back these voters who used to be Democratic and have moved to Donald Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:37]
| And actually, if you look at the result of the last election, once you got down another real detailed analysis of who showed up to vote, what did it show, Sam? Sam, did you see? Because we shared this on the Slack.
|
Sam:
[1:41:48]
| I can't remember. I shared it. You shared it on the Slack.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:50]
| What did it say, Sam? What was the final bottom line again?
|
Sam:
[1:41:54]
| It said the more democratic a region, the lower the turnout.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:58]
| Ah!
|
Sam:
[1:42:01]
| And this this applied all across the country is basically, you know, Democrats not being excited and not turning out to vote because you're you're you're trying to message in a way. And like a lot of this, I don't want to keep going back to the last campaign, but part of this is like, you know, okay, first Biden and then Harris were like, okay, let's campaign a lot with Lynn Cheney and stuff and try to win those like never Trump Republicans and stuff like that. Which, okay, you didn't get very many of those, but you did provably lose a bunch of left-leaning people who were like, I can't vote for them. They're like on the stage with Lynn Cheney. You know, and they're they're not supporting Palestine and they're doing this.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:58]
| How many times did I fucking vociferously say over and over that this entire elections came down to fucking making your base show up?
|
Sam:
[1:43:10]
| Yeah well and this is the one thing like for for for decades and decades on both sides the political strategy was go for that median voter go for the median voter go for the media it's changed trump changed that proved that going for the base and energizing people who typically don't vote at all, can win.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:34]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:43:35]
| And can win very effectively.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:37]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:43:38]
| And what it does, I don't want to point to Donald Trump as like a model in a lot of areas because the base that he energized was a bunch of-
|
Ivan:
[1:43:48]
| Is a fucking bunch of racist lunatics. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:43:52]
| Exactly. He got the racist lunatics to come out. But on the left, you know, look, there are a whole bunch of people who aren't coming out because they're disillusioned and don't believe anything you say and think you're too centrist that you could potentially get there. Now, and, you know, how far I'm not saying the solution is move the party left, but I am saying the solution is don't actively alienate those people. Now, will the result be the party does move a little bit left? Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:24]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:44:24]
| And that's OK.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:25]
| You know what? The problem is, again, the party moving to the left, a lot of the shit that we're talking about, policy-wise is is is the nuance it's it's nuance in in.
|
Sam:
[1:44:38]
| Most cases but also people have pointed out like when we say move the party left we're kind of actually saying only move it back to where it was a few years ago yeah like things are moving like me like democratic leadership positions at this point are often very similar to where the republicans were 15 years ago not always not always, to be clear, but like it depends on the issue. It depends on a whole bunch of stuff. But, you know, if there is a lot of energy potentially waiting to be activated on the left. And I think what we went and in positions aside, frankly, positions aside, you need youth, you need energy and you need conviction on positions.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:27]
| The average Democratic voter has also moved far to the left.
|
Sam:
[1:45:30]
| Yes, the average Democratic voter has moved further to the left. But I think what people are sick of overall is this sort of is the exact kind of stuff they're talking about and deciding to win of like people triangulating and trying to pick their positions based on how they think the election result is going to go. No, you want people who have a strong feeling about their positions to start with and then work on convincing everybody else to agree with them.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:59]
| Yep. Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:46:01]
| You know, and show that you really believe it and show people why you believe it and what and the benefit it will have for them and everybody else. Like, and, you know, honestly, another thing we found is a huge portion of the public can't even imagine something unless it directly affects them. So you have to show how this stuff affects you. You have to show that this isn't some theoretical, we're defending the rights of somebody that you don't know and have no knowledge of. But you have to show how, yeah, this does affect you. This is in your neighborhood, whether you think so or not. you know remember uncle jim was doing this kind of stuff and you know what this would affect him or yeah and you have to break through some of this bullshit too i mean like on the snap conversation we were having i've seen so many posts in social media about a bunch of people just like the you know people who don't know that their local state plan is really the same as obama can there There are a lot of people saying, wait, what do you mean? Snap and food stamps and EBT are the same thing?
|
Sam:
[1:47:10]
| I didn't know this would affect me. I thought this was affecting like, you know, the poor people in the inner cities. What do you mean this is going to, this is affecting my stuff? You know, shocking, shocking. So there's definitely some communication stuff, but and a lot of and I know I know it's not all about age, but the top layers, there are so many, not even boomers, but also silent generation people hanging on. it's time to let go let the young folks have this completely aside from policy issues they understand the media environment better they're not just like oh we'll buy some more tv ads they know how to like work in a social media world they know how to do this and or at least can get the right consultants to do it for them but many of them are know how to do it themselves and you You know, it's just like the people who are stuck in the 90s, I've seen a lot of people referring to this as actually stuck in the West Wing mindset of like, you know, the way the government works should be the way it worked in West Wing, in the West Wing TV show.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:27]
| Yeah, yeah, the TV show.
|
Sam:
[1:48:28]
| You know, not the actual West Wing. You know, maybe if there had been an East Wing TV show, this wouldn't have happened.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:36]
| This wouldn't have happened if we wouldn't get the East Wing demolished.
|
Sam:
[1:48:38]
| The East Wing being torn down, but, you know, no. And, you know, no, that's, if that ever, first of all, it wasn't how the real world would work, even in the 90s, to be clear. But it's certainly not how things work now. And it's certainly not how the political environment works now. You have to recognize that going back to the days where the two parties cooperate and Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan go have a drink afterwards, that's not the world today. Maybe someday it'll be back, but you got to move on and deal with the world as it is.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:13]
| Not anytime soon.
|
Sam:
[1:49:14]
| Now we can be done.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:15]
| Now we can be done? Okay. Hold on. Let's be done.
|
Sam:
[1:49:18]
| Now we can be done. So, curmudgeons-corner.com, as I mentioned last week, recently stuff added. The social media stuff moved around and made to look nicer. There's a way to order the damn cup. I mean, mug, if you want cups, let us know. We can do more swag, but no, if you want a mug, Commodities Corner Bug now available directly for purchase. Nobody's bought one since I, you know, a bunch of people said they wanted mugs and then I add it to the site and I haven't seen any orders come in. Of course, I haven't checked my mail either. Maybe there are. Oops. I don't know. Let's see. do i have any order let's see fantastic no no no no did wait ah i'm sizzling let's see no no i'm just checking checking no no no nobody has ordered one yet i you know you people out there who are like i want a curmudgeon's corner link on the damn website so i can just buy one it's been a week? How long do you need? Look, I get a dollar for every one of these mugs sold, and I've been laid off. Buy some damn mugs.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:31]
| Buy about, you know, a thousand mugs a week, damn it, you people. What the hell's wrong with you?
|
Sam:
[1:50:37]
| Exactly. Buy some damn mugs. Anyway, we've got the link to the mug now. We've got all the ways to contact us. We've got the archive of our show. We've got transcripts. And of course, another way to give me money, we've also got the Patreon. go to the Patreon at various levels we'll mention you on the show, we'll ring a bell we'll send you a postcard, we'll send you a mug, and all that fun stuff and importantly, at $2 a month or more or, if you just ask us we will invite you to the Commudgence Course Slack where Yvonne and I, And a bunch of other folks are sharing links, talking about the news, talking about other stuff. That was the first place outside of my family you would have found out that I was laid off. You know, you could have known already and now you didn't know until you listened to the show and that's on you. No, all kinds of stuff. So, Yvonne, it's lots of fun. Please join us. Yvonne, what is the story from the Commissions Core Slack that are going to make people want to give us millions of dollars and join the slack.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:40]
| Sam altman wants a refund for his fifty thousand dollar tesla roadster deposit okay so apparently sam altman back in july of 2018 placed a fifty thousand dollar deposit for a tesla roadster okay which you know they announced that they would be coming soon and apparently he tried to send an email recently to try to get a refund on it and on the link that was on the on the deposit to try to request a refund the email came back as undeliverable okay um nice you know so yeah so it and so to be clear the tesla roadster 2.0 was announced in 2017 and it is eight years later and we haven't even seen a prototype.
|
Sam:
[1:52:40]
| Of course.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:41]
| You know, so, yeah. So, I mean, it was a $50,000 deposit on this fucking car. It wasn't like, you know, because other cars that he sold, you know, you get $2,000, a couple of whatever bucks. $50,000 deposit for this thing.
|
Sam:
[1:52:58]
| That's a hefty deposit.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:00]
| It's a hefty deposit. And I have heard stories that there's a number of people in this, on this boat, that also gave these $50,000 deposits that they have not been refunded so far. And I wouldn't hold my breath on seeing that Salm Altman is going to get his money back anytime soon.
|
Sam:
[1:53:20]
| Yeah. So, one more thing I realized I should say about the Slack, especially for new people. Like, because we have had a couple new people to the Slack. you should be aware when you when you first joined the slack you're put into what we call the general channel that's where we mostly talk about news but we also have a random channel the place where i talked about on my layoffs was a random channel you have to join the random channel if you wanted it we've all so you know so that's where we talk about all the non-newsies sort of fun or fun stuff like layoffs fun fun fun layoff stuff um we also have we also have a channel for games where people are playing Wordle and the weekly news quiz from what?
|
Ivan:
[1:54:03]
| Bloomberg.
|
Sam:
[1:54:03]
| Who is it? Bloomberg?
|
Ivan:
[1:54:05]
| The pointed news quiz.
|
Sam:
[1:54:07]
| Jesus Christ.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:07]
| Last week, I somehow scored well and I got so many. The questions were so hard. That had been my, you know, because the thing is.
|
Sam:
[1:54:16]
| I haven't done this week yet.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:17]
| The pointed news quiz, you can gamble on points. And so sometimes you can come out ahead of points, even though you didn't answer as many questions wrong. Each question has 10 points, but there are sliders where you can double or triple down your bet, whatever. And so, but last week I did on points, okay, but the reality is... Man, I had like five answers wrong. And a lot of the questions, I think your dad would have done really well. Like half the questions were about Africa. African government. I'm like, who is the president of this country? I'm like, what the fuck do I know? Listen, let me tell you something. I have always struggled with Africa, countries, politics. I remember in high school.
|
Sam:
[1:55:02]
| Speaking of which, there was a huge massacre in Sudan this week.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:06]
| Yes, that was in the news this week, which we didn't talk about.
|
Sam:
[1:55:09]
| This is something I, you know, I'll fully admit, I have not followed it in detail, but apparently like over 10,000 civilians killed, you know, and you'd think that would be like top of the news everywhere. But of course it's not because that's not how things work. But anyway, we have the Games Channel. as said i i haven't done wordle in a long long time but a few people are sharing their world and i screwed up a 50.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:35]
| Game streak this week because i was so busy with work yesterday.
|
Sam:
[1:55:39]
| That and and i have been trying to do this news quiz the last couple weeks i haven't done this week's yet i'll do it later today and then we had nicholas who are i call him nick i he's on the thing as nicholas but i know it's nick it's nick nick was on here asking if we do pips well i haven't done it but i'm.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:00]
| I i was about to do it for the.
|
Sam:
[1:56:02]
| First time it's a new york time it's another new york times crossword no it's a dominoes kind of thing right like dominoes i.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:09]
| I i saw i haven't looked but i saw.
|
Sam:
[1:56:11]
| It's another new york times game uh well all i know is i was.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:15]
| Gonna try it i was planning on trying it today.
|
Sam:
[1:56:17]
| Okay. So we might be doing those and basically sharing these kinds of stuff. And then we have one channel called Show Topics where people can suggest things for us to talk about on the show. Usually it's mostly me writing down things, occasionally Yvonne, and very occasionally somebody else, but we'd love more input there. And then I have one I haven't posted, oh God, in over a year. I have to take care of that. A show stats one where I post like charts of our listenership periodically. But it looks like I haven't posted since September 2024 in that one. So I should post an update there. Anyway, we've got a bunch of channels. Check out all of them, not just general. And yeah, and tell if you've got a deposit down for your roadster. You know, tell us your experiences about it. And if you get a refund on it, just send it to me.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:10]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:57:11]
| Sound good? Sound good? Okay. Okay. With that, we are done. We are out of here. Thank you, everybody, for listening to another Commissions. Oh, oh, next week, Yvonne will be out. We've already got two volunteers to join us on the show. We've got Bruce and Ed that are lined up. I owe them a message saying that the time they suggested is good. The time they suggested is good. I will respond to that. But we're looking at doing like a round table. So the more the merrier. If you also want to join myself, Ed, and Bruce on next week's show, let me know. Let me make sure when we're recording this, because we do have a time now. Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. When did we say? When did we say? Hold on.
|
Sam:
[1:58:00]
| November 6th, which is, wait a second, where am I? Where am I? November 6th, which is Thursday. Thursday at 7 p.m. Pacific time, which is 10 p.m. Eastern, is when we are recording the next episode. If you would like to join myself, Ed, and Bruce, please send me a message either through to Curmudgeon's Corner Slack if you're on there or through any of the contact mechanisms listed on curmudgeon-corner.com. Let me know. I will also still send out the usual email I send out about these things directly after this show is put out. And of course, we're doing this because Ivan will be out because Ivan will be recuperating from his own surgery. So, Yvonne, good luck on your surgery. Enjoy your surgery.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:52]
| Oh, thank you. Enjoy the surgery. Oh, thank you. Listen, I was going to ask the doctor to say, hey, you know, you're putting me under propofol, right? And I don't know if you've ever been under that sleep, but, you know, it's like.
|
Sam:
[1:59:04]
| I don't remember what I was under.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:06]
| Exactly. You're like done. You're out. You don't remember anything that you wake up on the other side and it's all done. I was like, look, could I just use this until Trump is dead? Can you just listen? Just send me in there. It's just, you know, because I won't notice that I'm gone. It's just, look, moment Trump is dead, and you wake me up and you tell me, hey, Ivan, surgery's good, Trump is dead. Great!
|
Sam:
[1:59:29]
| There you go. Of course, he's going to do one of those, like having his mind uploaded into a robot or whatever, and he'll live for millions of years.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:38]
| Oh, then we'll, you know... You know, we can probably, probably Elon Musk. I don't know. It's probably going to be like that robot that was doing the dishes this week that was making the rounds on video. You not see that one?
|
Sam:
[1:59:52]
| For $20,000, you can now put your deposit down on a humanoid robot that will do the chores in your house. Their goal is to have not all AI enabled. But the reality today is the AI is not up to the task. So what you would get right now if you buy this thing would be a tele-operated thing where there's somebody with VR goggles somewhere operating the robot in your house doing the cleaning.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:19]
| Oh, that's so helpful. And yes, at a snail's pace, mind you, because they were showing how this thing struggled to put like two cups, a fork, and like a plate inside a dishwasher, and that took five minutes. And by the way, when it went to close the dishwasher, it couldn't even really close the dishwasher all the way, let alone turn it all on.
|
Sam:
[2:00:43]
| Right. Probably can't push the buttons to properly turn it on.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:47]
| Exactly. Yeah. So, yeah. Right. I'm not perfected yet.
|
Sam:
[2:00:50]
| No, I look, this is a technology I am anxious for. Listen, get me one of these things that works.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:56]
| Yes. Listen, if you could get me one of those that works.
|
Sam:
[2:01:00]
| With a real robot, not like some human guy.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:03]
| With a real robot, I would be happy with it. But, you know, right now you're basically spending. It's one of those things. It's like what we get with Trump in general, which is.
|
Sam:
[2:01:13]
| I mean, fuck all this AI to do other stuff. Give me the AI that will actually do all my household chores. Oh my God.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:22]
| What I said is that this is the typical Trump product. Extremely expensive and very low on effectiveness.
|
Sam:
[2:01:30]
| Yes. Yes. I mean, I actually have confidence that eventually the technology will get there for something like this.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:37]
| But this is not it. And I will say this, that if that robot was $20,000, right now, and it worked the way that you described it. Isn't it just a deposit that's $20,000?
|
Sam:
[2:01:49]
| Or is it like the actual robot's $20,000? I thought it set the price of $20,000, plus some sort of subscription, I'm sure.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:56]
| But what I'm saying is that if you told me that you would sell me a robot right now for $20,000 that could help with household chores, I mean, I would think that you could probably finance it in some way, right?
|
Sam:
[2:02:07]
| I'm sure.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:08]
| Yeah. I mean, that would be something to consider.
|
Sam:
[2:02:11]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:12]
| I mean, say, like, I got my parents that are getting old. That would be nice for them to have a little robot at the house that could help them with their daily chores.
|
Sam:
[2:02:20]
| Of course, there are a lot of science fiction stories that start with the household robots and end badly for the humans.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:29]
| To be clear, there's that movie, the best one probably with this is that iRobot movie, you know, where, I don't know, all of a sudden the robots, you know, are being centrally controlled by a thing and then they... try to jail all the humans.
|
Sam:
[2:02:43]
| There have been countless.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:45]
| There have been a lot of movies, but the one that was like a big one.
|
Sam:
[2:02:48]
| Like Reason. There have been movies, books, TV shows. My son and I, preview for a head, we actually just finished The Orville, which also has this theme. There's a race of humanoid robots that overthrew their masters who were mean to them that started out as exactly this kind of household robot. And I pointed out to Alex, they even the ones that Elon is making not the ones that this is but the ones that Elon is making his household robot things actually look like the ones from the Orville he probably like where.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:21]
| He got them from.
|
Sam:
[2:03:22]
| Probably and anyway they go and massacre all the living beings because the living beings treated them like slaves surprise, anyway we're done Yvonne I was trying to say goodbye bye thank you everybody have a good week stay safe all that stuff goodbye bye say bye one more time one more time bye bye bye, Okay, now I get to start my decompression, relaxing, working on shit, all that. I get to start using up all that time. Right, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[2:04:28]
| Yeah, start decompressing. Okay, go to your decompression chamber immediately.
|
Sam:
[2:04:32]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:33]
| You have one in the house, right? It's in the garage.
|
Sam:
[2:04:35]
| Yeah, but not like being thrown out of a spaceship. Not that kind of decompression.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:38]
| Oh, well, maybe.
|
Sam:
[2:04:41]
| Maybe. Okay. I guess I kind of was thrown out of a spaceship.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:45]
| Basically.
|
Sam:
[2:04:45]
| In a sense.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:46]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:04:46]
| Yeah. Okay, done.
| |
|
